- Dyspraxia can cause ASD like traits due to its main 'symptoms' and make early interaction or normal social developmental stages a bit more difficult (i.e.getting bullied could cause loss of confidence, lack of co-ordination could mean not as likely to interact with peers with sports, dressing up could be avoided due to sensory issues etc.

Personally I believe all 3 are true.

In my own experience of being a 20 year old with severe dyspraxia, I was informally diagnosed with AS at 6. At the time I seemed to fit a significant part of the criteria (obessesional behaviour, odd behaviour, need for long routines, need for the house to be a certain 'way', have to sit on a certain 'chair' , couldn't tell when people were bored, couldn't tolerate loud noises/certain clothes/smells etc) but as I got older I got better with certain stuff- but at age 10 was diagnosed with PDD-NOS (failed theory of mind test) and was almost diagnosed with AS again at 17. But, when I was younger my 'behaviour' was more of an issue than the other stuff, whereas now I have coping mechanisms- I walked to the shop independently when I was 17, got the first train on my own when I was 17 1/2, finally felt comfortable using the phone/ordering pizza/talking to a waiter at a restraunt/buying cinema tickets at 18 etc I still have routines to an extent, and they help relax me but most people unless you know me extremely well will not notice them, still get anxious and have meltdowns/overload if it gets too much with work/uncertain stuff/tired etc, when I was a kid I always enjoyed talking to adults much more than people my own age (My mums best friend told me she could hold a proper conversation with me when I was barely 7) and still have to watch if I'm boring people with stuff (something I have got loads better with), more confident (Going to Sixthform and uni were the 2 best changes in my life and made me a much happier person), still have issues with noise, clothes, smells etc, but people are very aware and work around them!

Both my sixthform senco, uni disabilities 'person', consultant, OT and neurologist consider Dyspraxia to be on the spectrum.

I think officially dyspraxia is classed as a 'specific learning difficulty' (like dyslexia and dyscalculia). However, as Ruby says;

1. It often occurs comorbidly with autistic spectrum disorders, particularly asperger's syndrome2. Some of the symptoms of dyspraxia, such as poor social skills, are similiar to those observed in autism.

I agree with Charlotte (C). I know that my child psychiatrist considered the autistic spectrum to be made up of "classic" autism, Aspergers Syndrome and Pervasive Developmental Disorder Not Otherwise Specified (PDDNOS). Other professionals consider diagnoses such as Childhood Disintegrative Disorder (an awful name, I know-makes it sound like they melt down to nothing but it basically just means that they had a period of typical development before losing skills and showing a deterioration in behaviour and the ability to cope with sensory stimuli-2 of my students had this profile) and Retts Syndrome to be on the spectrum as well. I remember reading something by Vicky (Parnassus), if my memory serves me correctly, on this forum, that dyspraxia is the "bridge" between specific learning difficulties such as dyslexia, which have little effect on social skills (although a lot of people with dyslexia can present with social difficulties due to low self esteem) and autistic spectrum disorders which do have an impact on social skills and an impact that is neurological rather than based on life experiences. I like this description of it as I feel it is the one that is most true in my experience as although a lot of people with dyspraxia do have autistic type social difficulties, not all of them do and, if it was an autistic spectrum disorder, every person with dyspraxia would be affected by the social problems intrinsic in the Triad of Impairment which is used to diagnose autism. Interestingly, although perhaps not so relevant to this topic, from purely anecdotal evidence, it seems that people on the Aspergers end of the spectrum, such as myself, have more difficulties with physical coordination than people on the other end of the spectrum. 6 out of 8 of my students are diagnosed with severe autism and yet all of them, bar one, have better coordination than me-a lot better, in some cases, and the one who has severely impaired coordination is registered blind and her difficulties are as a result of that. I remember also reading in a journal on ASD that people with Aspergers are more likely to have dyspraxia than people with "classic" autism.

Wow-I've gone on for far too long! My short answer is no but there is a lot of crossover traits.

That's interesting, Steph. Yes, from what I've heard doing psychology (I was actually writing about this in my dissertation today), people with 'classic autism' tend to be exceptionally good spatially, often excelling at tasks like block design, which requires you to fit coloured blocks together to make a pattern and embedded figures test, which measure spatial skills. There's actually a theory of autism called 'weak central coherence', that states that people with autism have difficulty processing the gestalt (or context), but process details better than most people. This means they're good at logic and activities requiring detail but may account for some of their social skills difficulties (ie. if someone is in a social situation and processing what someone else is saying word by word instead of within the context, they may be slower to understand jokes or irony). But some people with Asperger's Syndrome don't excel at block design, in fact they struggle with it as do most people with dyspraxia (people with dyslexia tend to be good visual spatial thinkings and quite good at this task). In fact, I've also heard that most people with Asperger's Syndrome will have dyspraxia, meaning they will have impaired motor skills.

And some people with dyspraxia don't have social difficulties. My cousin has dyspraxia as well and she's completely different from me, although I don't expect everyone with the same disorder to act the same of course! But a lot of the social problems I have she doesn't, which does lead me to think on occasion that I may have some autistic spectrum disorder as welll... (others have laughed when I've said that and said not to be ridiculous!) Still, maybe she has some subtle social problems and everyone has different strengths and weaknesses.